DALLAS, TX, December 12, 2005 – Scott & Scott, LLP is issuing the following statement from Robert J. Scott, Managing Partner, in response to the Business Software Alliance / IDC 2005 Economic Impact Study:
“Scott & Scott recognizes the BSA’s efforts to understand how businesses, governments and consumers are impacted by software piracy and the macroeconomic implications of a reduction in piracy. At the same time, we have reviewed the findings of the Business Software Alliance / IDC 2005 Economic Impact Study and find several flaws in its logic. Specifically, we would like to highlight one:
The study includes “corporate overuse” in its definition of piracy. The definition of piracy should include counterfeiting and intentional copying but should exclude unintentional corporate overuse, typically involving the use of a small percentage of additional installations relative to what the company has actually purchased. To put honest businesses struggling to achieve and maintain compliance in the same category as blatant criminals who engage in counterfeiting is not appropriate for the following reasons:
- Software publishers and their associations, including the BSA, have failed to take the necessary steps to make compliance management easier for honest companies.
- The software industry’s failure to adopt standards for the information that gets recorded at the time software products are installed creates a significant burden on honest businesses. Business that try to track the software installed on their networks find it nearly impossible to compile accurate data because the publishers themselves do not record accurate and complete information in the registry of the operating system where the software is installed. As a result, publishers often penalize companies for not having purchased software, when in fact, the publishers did not provide the accurate data for the software to be tracked properly.
- Further complicating the compliance management problem is the need to reconcile installation information to a variety of procurement records. Because the software industry has failed to adopt standard naming conventions or product codes that can be traced to information recorded at the time of installation, the reconciliation process is not amenable to automation. Many large organizations have entire software asset management departments dedicated to conducting this effort manually at tremendous costs.
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- The software industry has done nothing to simplify or standardize license agreements. The average company lacks the resources necessary to understand all the nuances of the complex labyrinth of licensing rules, including upgrade rights, downgrade rights, client access licenses and development licenses. Many publishers fail to make public their licensing rules and do very little to educate end users, choosing instead to make their interpretation of the rules known to their clients for the first time during the adversarial audit process.
While Scott & Scott respects the right of software publishers to protect their intellectual property, to include corporate overuse in the definition of “piracy” is an insult to the millions of legitimate companies that regularly expend enormous effort and invest millions of dollars to comply with the lengthy, counterintuitive and complex license agreements used by the software industry. The BSA continues to ignore that millions of well intended businesses routinely purchase legitimate software for the majority of the products that are installed but simply do not have the resources – both financial and human – to interpret software license agreements and establish very costly compliance efforts, largely because of the unnecessary complexities of these agreements and how difficult it is to reconcile software installation information to procurement records.”
Editor’s Note: Robert Scott is an expert in software license compliance and conducts regular seminars entitled, “Successfully Defending Software Audits” and “Software Asset Management & The Law.” Robert graduated summa cum laude from Austin College in Sherman, Texas with a B.A. in economics. He earned his law degree from Hofstra University School of Law in New York. Robert is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, the Managed Services Providers Alliance, the IT Compliance Institute, and the Science and Technology Section of the American Bar Association.
About Scott & Scott, LLP
Scott & Scott (www.scottandscottllp.com and www.bsadefense.com) is a leading law and technology services firm dedicated to helping senior executives assess and reduce the legal, financial, and regulatory risks associated with software compliance. Scott & Scott’s legal and technology professionals provide software audit defense and software compliance solutions, all protected by attorney-client and work-product privileges. |
